Nigeria’s security architecture, as currently constituted, is a sham. Its police force is clueless and oppressive. Having surrendered its authority to non-state actors over the years, the real power of violence now resides with Islamist insurgents, robbers, kidnappers and now, Fulani herdsmen-terrorists. The January 1 massacre by herdsmen, in which 73 people were slain in two local government areas of Benue State, is the latest in a string of terror attacks. This underscores the inability of the Nigerian state to protect the citizens. This is an extremely volatile moment for the country, seeing that the security of lives and property is the raison d’être for the existence of government.
There has been a genuine outpouring of grief following the bloodshed by herdsmen in Logo and Guma LGAs, but it is worse that the Muhammadu Buhari government is still chasing shadows instead of halting the menace. Governor Samuel Ortom of Benue State stated that rampaging herdsmen had murdered 1,878 people, and injured 750 others in the three years to July 2017. The Global Terrorism Index noted that Fulani herdsmen were the fourth deadliest terror group in the world in 2014 after killing 1,229 people. Despite the knee-jerk directive Buhari gave to the Inspector-General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, to relocate to Benue, not much has been achieved.
At the root of the herdsmen’s scorched-earth policy is their unfettered access to lethal weapons. The Alaafin of Oyo, Lamidi Adeyemi, was spot-on when he declared that the use of firearms, including AK-47 gun, to protect cattle was a complete novelty to what hitherto used to be a business endeavour.” In those days, stick was the only weapon with which the breeders directed their cattle. When was it the practice that Fulani breeders would arm themselves to the teeth just to protect their cattle? In the past, part of the guidance, which breeders gave to their cattle, was to ensure that they did not destroy farm crops along their way. But today, with the arms at their disposal, some Fulani breeders choose to target green leaves of farmers’ crops as good protein for their cattle and therefore, lead their cattle aggressively to that direction. The big question, therefore, is that how do those cattle breeders come across the sophisticated weapons with which they arm themselves as if they are going to war?” A former Commonwealth Secretary-General, Emeka Anyaoku, puts it more bluntly: “The herdsmen should be acknowledged for what they are: terrorists.”
By law, it is a crime to carry unlicensed arms, but the security system is so dysfunctional and compromised that Fulani herdsmen openly clutch lethal weapons. The failure of the security agencies to stop them bespeaks official complicity in their genocide. Allowing the herdsmen to bear arms without restraint when others are not accorded the same privilege leaves the farming communities at their mercy. It is offensive and illegal for herders to conduct animal husbandry on another man’s land. So long as the political will to disarm the Fulani is locked out by emotion and sectionalism, the killings will persist no matter the directives from Buhari or the National Assembly. Ortom said that in spite of the presence of the IG in Benue, and the deployment of 663 mobile police officers, five people were killed by the Fulani marauders in the one week to January 17.
Their level of impunity is atrocious. A Nobel laureate, Wole Soyinka, shredded their argument: “Permit me to remind you that, early in 2016, an even more hideous massacre was perpetrated by this same Murder Incorporated … a peace meeting was called, attended by the state government and security agencies of the nation, including the Inspector-General of Police. This group attended – according to reports – with AK-47s and other weapons of mass intimidation visible under their garments. They were neither disarmed nor turned back. They freely admitted the killings but justified them by claims that they had lost their cattle to the host community. Such are the monstrous beginnings of the culture of impunity. We are reaping, yet again, the consequences of such tolerance of the intolerable.”
In plain language, the country’s security set-up appears incapable of stopping the rampage. Indeed, the best the Buhari government seems able to do is to appeal to the mourning communities to “accommodate” their killers. This is appalling. In contrast, the security agencies in Ghana, led by the police, enforced a 2012 court order that banned open grazing of cattle. The security agencies shot dead the animals, forcing the herdsmen to plead for a few days to comply with the court order. If Nigeria does not embrace such a model of law and order, there will be no solution to the Fulani carnage. Therefore, the police, the State Security Service and the military should start by disarming the herdsmen and tracing the source of their arms. If they do not have guns, they cannot embark on the killing spree.
This is not only the antidote to their belligerent posture to the Benue anti-open grazing law, which instigated the latest massacre, it is also to inculcate in them the idea that open grazing is an outdated way to conduct their business. In the past, when there was not much contest for land, open grazing could have been “a way of life.” Not anymore. In the United Kingdom, the law gives rural communities greater powers to deal with animals that are left to graze illegally without the landowners’ permission. So, this way of life has become divisive and destructive; it infringes on the rights of farming communities, and their liberty; it fuels trespass, and the law is supreme to a way of life that does not value human life. The case of a former Chief of Naval Staff, Samuel Afolayan, who stated that for the past 10 years, herdsmen had been destroying part of his farmland in Kwara State, is poignant. He put his loss at N200 million. Apart from economic and human losses, this primitive way of life is a threat to Nigeria’s food security.
To handle this scourge properly, Buhari and his security chiefs should put an end to their policy of appeasement. Fulani herdsmen cannot and should not be treated differently from other Nigerians – farmers, fishermen or poultry keepers. In 1989, the Federal Government established the National Commission for Nomadic Education in order to ensure that nomads had unfettered access to basic education. But in view of their violent disposition to host communities, the nomadic way of life has become a serious threat to Nigerians’ co-existence. Livestock cannot be allowed to roam without penalty. It is common sense that if livestock is herded or grazed on another person’s property, the livestock owner is liable for all the damage.
It is time to implement the global best practices in the multibillion dollar cattle business by setting up ranches. Ranching is the practice in Brazil, Australia, the United States, Europe, and the Middle East. Negligent livestock owners should be made to face the law. Therefore, cattle owners should be made to invest in ranches, not guns. The herders should be disarmed now.
